“I think you should stop following me.” I turn and walk backward. “Unless you want to come out. That might be too much fun. That might actually classify as living life.”
Valeska badly wants me back behind the picket fence where nothing bad can happen to me. I can see it in him—the strain of his body, the hands folded at his sides. Guard and drag, that’s what he wants to do.
“I have to start early. Darce, please stay in tonight.”
No way am I going to indulge myself in his overprotective Princess Mode. It’s too succulent, too lovely. I can’t be under the same roof as him alone. “Nope.”
“I promised everyone I’d look after you,” he tries again, before realizing what he’s done. Saying that will only make me walk faster.
“I can’t,” I call back to him. “I don’t trust myself anymore.”
I turn as his jaw drops, and now it’s just the sound of my boots. I don’t have to look back to know he watches until I’m out of sight.
It’s what he does.
* * *
TOM IS WRITING JAMIE SPORTS onto a box of my brother’s sports gear. We are attempting the impossible: emptying his room. “So, how was your night? You must have come in pretty late.”
“Barely midnight. I guess that’s pretty late for an early bird like you.”
“Did you have a good time?” He’s quite formal.
“Sure.” Not even for a second did I have a good time. I didn’t see Vince, or anyone I knew. I travel alone overseas, so I’m used to my own company. But something has changed.
I was desperate to get back home. I wanted to lie on the couch with a movie on, listening to Patty’s claws clicking and Tom padding around. His fingers tousling my hair and the clink of a teaspoon in a mug. To quash this weird domestic fantasy, I sat in McDonald’s and ate hot-fudge sundaes, then I got a cab home when I felt confident he was asleep. I’m a McCoward.
I need a new place to sleep tonight, Tom said as I was brushing my teeth this morning, and I’m glad my mouth was full of toothpaste. I might have reflexively replied, No you don’t.
He has charitably erased that weird moment last night. He’s good like that.
I try to do the same. “Jamie’s sitting at his desk, poking away at a calculator. Witness me, officially working harder than him. He sure does like books about dudes being framed by the government.” I’m stacking them into a box.
“Books with short chapters and briefcases of cash,” Tom says, dragging crap out from under the bed. He’s read plenty of Jamie’s discarded books in his time.
“Women with glossy red lips. Speedboats in Monte Carlo.” I pick up one with a revolver on the cover, and it flips open a little too easily to a dirty bit. I read it, leaning against the bed frame.
Tom looks up from stacking some dumbbells together. “Your hard work didn’t last long.”
I hold my finger up. There’s a foaming, grunting climax and I wrinkle my nose. “And now Jamie and I have read the same sex scene. It’s in both of our brains.” I have a full-body shiver. “Why can’t I stop disturbing myself?”
“No idea,” Tom laughs. He takes the book, and to my surprise he reads the entire scene too, flipping over the page with a crease on his brow like he’s studying for an exam.
I watch his eyes move side to side, sweaty words in his head.
My heart wrings itself out, gives me a new flush of blood, and I think I have pink cheeks. If I’m this scandalized just watching Tom read a sex scene, I’d better not let my brain take the logical next step.
Too late. Look at those big hands. Knuckles like walnuts and nice clean nails. They’re the kind of hands that you want all over. And now I’m picturing the huge upward push of his body, locking himself into me, 100 percent deep—
He snaps the book shut and snaps me out of my reverie.
“Well, that was remarkably straightforward.” He tosses the book in the box, his eyes giving me no clues. Is that scene a reasonable proposition to him?
“The guys in these books are drilling for iron ore.”
Tom laughs. “And the ones written in the seventies always mention a brassiere. I was at least seventeen when I realized that was just a bra.”
“You were quite a naïve boy. There are always puckered peaks and nests of curls,” I grunt, lifting a second half-empty box up. “And the women all orgasm after eight hard thrusts. Oh, Richard! Give me a break.” I write on the box: JAMIE’S FUCK BOOKS.